


The Trifecta

by weaving_a_tale



Category: Comanche Moon, Striking Range, The Phoenix Incident
Genre: F/M, Gen, Whole lotta OCs, aka I take those thin plots and thicken them up, the Troy Trifecta, what if Troy was actually in something GOOD?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 15:25:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11151222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaving_a_tale/pseuds/weaving_a_tale
Summary: Sometimes, there are stories still left to be told after the credits roll/the curtain falls/whatever metaphor you want to use.(Basically what happens when you watch Striking Range, Comanche Moon and The Phoenix Incident in a marathon.)





	The Trifecta

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, to escape requires a little madness....

Brice supposed he had his father to thank for all this.

If that man had not left him alone in that basement all those years, he never would have made it through the complete works of Shakespeare.

It was an old book, worn and dusty, likely from his father's college days.

But to Brice, where the only things he had were food, board games and the occasional tutor that he would scare off?

It was shiny and new.

It was his bible, his companion during those lonesome years, and it got to the point he could quote it verbatim given the right prompt.

Which, of course, his father was none too pleased about.

His father didn't seem to be pleased with much of anything Brice did, frankly.

Hell, Brice expected the man to go to his grave certain of two things.

That he was a genius, and that Brice Billings was his punishment for the mistakes of his youth.

Brice had once broached the topic of getting himself treatment, proper treatment for his porphyria, after a bout of the disease that ended with Brice requiring an emergency transfusion.

Course his father had responded to that like everything else. That it wasn't necessary.

So he did it on his own. Cobbled together what he could and began his treatments.

Because you didn't need an IQ of 182 to know he couldn't keep living as if this was the 18th century. That there was nothing to treat his "madness" and allow him to decay.

It had been after one particular treatment that he found the old book again. The pages torn and well-loved, smelling of that basement that had been his home for all those years.

His father had been particularly...well, himself since they started this device that was supposed to separate quarks in the atom.

Brice had been encouraging of the idea, aware of its scientific ramifications.

All that had died when his father had insisted it would be sold to the highest bidder, likely the military.

Could be worse, he supposed. Could have his mother marry his uncle after the mysterious death of his father.

He wouldn't have minded that, actually. Uncle George from what he remembered had been a decent man unlike his brother. And from what little he could remember of his mother, she had been kind and sweet.

She never would have locked him in a basement for the majority of his life.

There was no....trigger, he supposed, for his decision. Hell, perhaps his whole life was a trigger of sorts.

Then again, the offer of funding from a branch of the scientific community that his father had rejected without a thought could have been one.

It wasn't the money that caught Brice's attention. It was the chance to get out from under his father's thumb. To live his own life.

It inevitably caused resentments from all those years to bubble to the surface.

And then it became very, very simple.

His father was the villain, and like Iago, Brice was going to pull whatever strings it took to bring him down.

It was easy enough, to contact the people again. Let them know the progress of the invention, state that all Brice needed was a month to get all the equipment out.

The only issue, it seemed, was HOW to get out. His father would never just LET him walk away, not without a fight.

It came to him one night as he sat in that abandoned warehouse, flipping through that old book.

Like the Prince of Denmark, he too would fake madness. To those who didn't know the intricacies of his condition, it made sense he would go insane. King George had, after all.

But like the Danish prince, he took it a fraction too far.

To be fair, he was certain no one would miss those thugs of the man who was out to take the invention. He could...excuse getting rid of them when he figured out they would break into the facility.

His father had been an afterthought. Those cuts and those punches his anger sharply pouring out until he was drained.

But Brice knew how this might end. He'd read too much tragedy to ever expect a happy ending.

The bulletproof vest and the fake blood were put in place. He allowed himself to be struck by those bullets.

He dramatically fell, and allowed the light to fade from his eyes.

And when it was all said and done?

He simply got up, picked up the device, and left.

Because unlike Hamlet, he had planned for after all this. Unlike Hamlet, he had been sitting on this for years and not only a fraction of time. It was meticulous where Hamlet had been chaotic.

But like Hamlet, someone else would take the throne. And he was happy to let them do so.

He drove the device to the scientific facility, dropped it off, allowing them to do with it as they pleased.

And then he left. Took the first flight he could out of the country. Got himself some decent clothes, enrolled in a few university courses.

Made himself into someone else and never looked back.

Brice Billings died that night. Brice Clark lived on.

And he never could quite bring himself to regret it.

He got close, once. When he heard his father had been arrested for what Brice had done.

But the man needed a comeuppance.

And besides...perhaps some time in jail would do him some good.

It eventually all faded away as the years passed. As he threw himself into his work for the first university that would take him, focusing purely on that.

He didn't mean to fall in love with a grad student. To start a whole new kind of chaos in his life that he knew next to nothing about.

But...that's a whole other tale for another time, isn't it?

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you unaware as I was (until some Google searching), there are two different kinds of porphyria. One does cause "madness", but that also requires hospitalization. So I figured Brice would have had the second type, which is a tad more common and DOESNT cause insanity. 
> 
> Also, c'mon. Shakespeare is glorious. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed yourselves!


End file.
